Obama calls Trump 'wannabe king' at Harris event

As lawmakers in North Carolina consider legislation to expand early voting in counties hard-hit by Hurricane Helene, the state’s top election official pushed back Thursday against making last-minute changes to early voting sites.

"Poll workers don't grow on trees, and they certainly don't when you're in a disaster situation where people may have been displaced," North Carolina State Board of Elections Chair Karen Brinson Bell said during a press call.

Brinson Bell said that legislation requiring countries to expand their early voting sites could "present challenges" to strained election officials in western North Carolina.

Over 2 million voters have cast their ballot in North Carolina since early in-person voting began in the state last week. Despite the damage from Helene, 76 early voting sites are in operation across the 25 counties covered by the federal disaster declaration.

"What has happened thus far is that in most of these counties, we are seeing turnout that's on par or greater with 2020. We feel like the early voting sites that they've identified that are right for their counties are working," Brinson Bell said.

-ABC News Peter Charalambous

In the final campaign stretch, ABC News Senior White House Correspondent Selina Wang reports she is hearing the phrase "nervous optimism" from multiple Harris campaign officials and donors.

Harris' team knows this race is still locked in a dead heat, but the optimism comes from the Democrats' "strong ground game." The hope is that their better organization and canvassing on the ground will tip the scales in their favor, but they're keenly aware that Republicans could outperform in the polls as Trump did in 2016.

The Harris campaign is doubling down on peeling away disaffected Republicans. As one donor put it: "We're now the party of AOC and Dick Cheney -- that's crazy."

While Harris started her campaign with a message about joy and the future -- with her catchphrase "we're not going back -- Harris is ending her campaign with a message that sounds a lot like President Joe Biden's when he was still in the race: that Trump is a fundamental threat to democracy.

Her campaign is betting this will make the difference with those swing voters, but the risk is overemphasizing the anti-Trump message versus a positive message about a future Harris presidency.

But campaign sources highlight the fact that Harris has all the big superstar surrogates who can help make the pitch in other ways, including Barack and Michelle Obama, Bill Clinton, Magic Johnson, Beyonce, Bruce Springsteen, Eminem and more while Trump has Elon Musk.

One campaign source, when asked what made them most nervous (such as the gender gap, turnout from Black men or something else), said: "Everything is on the margins, so everything makes me nervous."

-ABC News' Selina Wang

Gov. Tim Walz told organizers and volunteers at Duke University on Thursday that their youth vote in the battleground state could make a difference for "generations to come."

"What a privilege to be in this moment," he said. "They are going to write about Americans who stood up in this moment and said "hell no" to this, the tendencies of totalitarianism, and the division and racism, the hatred, the misogyny, everything else that goes with that. You're going to get asked, 'When you're my age, what did you do?' And your answer is, 'I did every damn thing possible.'"

Walz's message seemed more urgent than usual, with just 12 days until the election.

At first, Walz said he didn't want to put "fear" in the students. But he later asserted, while highlighting Trump's "enemy from within" remarks, that the former president would come for any of his political enemies.

"I'm on the top of his list, but don't kid yourself, you're somewhere on that list, too, if you disagree with these people," Walz said.

-ABC News' Isabella Murray

Speaking briefly to reporters in Philadelphia, Harris criticized Trump for not participating in Wednesday's CNN town hall, which had been the scheduled date for a second debate between the two candidates.

"Yet again, Trump not showing up, refused to be a part of a CNN debate, and clearly his staff has been saying he's exhausted," Harris said. "And the sad part about that is, he's trying to president of the United States, probably the toughest job in the world, and he's exhausted."

Harris also touted two recent endorsements from Republicans: former Congressman Fred Upton of Michigan and Shawn Reilly, the mayor of Waukesha, Wisconsin.

“This continues to be, I think, evidence of the fact that people who have been leaders in our country, regardless of their political party, understand what’s at stake. And they are weighing in -- courageously, in many cases -- in support of what we need to have, which is a president of the United States who understands the obligation to uphold the Constitution of the United States and our democracy,” she said.

-ABC News' Will McDuffie